PILOT PROJECT PROGRAM ABSTRACT The overarching mission of the Pilot Project Program of the Center for Human Health and the Environment (CHHE) is to provide pilot funding to Center members and other NC State, East Carolina University (ECU), and NC Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS) investigators to collect preliminary data that will support applications for external funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) . Important goals of the PPP are to foster the success of early stage investigators in EHS and to increase individual, collaborative, and multidisciplinary efforts to enhance and integrate research from molecular and cellular-based systems and model organisms to human population levels to address the fundamental mechanisms through which environmental exposures interface with the genome and epigenome to influence human disease. and other agencies supporting environmental health sciences (EHS) research The PPP is key to the success of the CHHE by: fostering early stage investigators, serving as a mechanism to recruit new scientists to EHS research; supporting innovative research initiatives that are difficult to fund at early stages; and cultivating cross-disciplinary projects that integrate basic, applied, clinical, and public health strengths of our Center. The PPP will support short-term projects to explore feasibility of new areas of study with a major emphasis on the effects and potential consequences of environmental exposures on human health. Funded pilot projects should lead to the collection of sufficient data to pursue support through extramural funding mechanisms. Consequently, the PPP will be the nexus for promoting an expansion of EHS research at NC State and ECU.